Business

Drug prohibition violence is beginning to affect multinationals -- and not only on the border. "It's Al Capone and Tony Soprano doing whatever they want with little or no actual police interference," says Tom Cseh, deputy director of Vance International, a security firm in Mexico City. Among the recent reported incidents: Caterpillar ordered 40 American employees with children home after a shootout at a school in Monterrey earlier this fall; oil-services giant Schlumberger (SLB) said prohibition violence in northern Mexico hurt third-quarter earnings; and Canadian mining company Goldcorp (GG) plans to build a landing strip to fly gold out of a mine instead of hauling it on unsafe highways.

Jonathan Leavitt of Medical Marijuana Caregivers of Maine says the group is being formed to make sure caregivers have a voice when policy decisions are made. Leavitt says that since the spring, medical marijuana caregiver networks have generated 500 good jobs throughout Maine.

When the state of Texas licensed him as a peyote distributor in 1990, Mauro Morales put a sign in his front yard with his name and phone number: "Peyote Dealer. Buy or Sell Peyote." But, the hallucinogenic cactus is becoming more difficult to find because many ranchers have stopped allowing peyote harvesters on their land, preferring to plow the grayish-green plant under so cattle can graze. Peyote is legal for use in some American Indian religious ceremonies, and since the mid-1970s, the Texas has licensed a small number of people to sell it to members of the Native American Church.

Veteran Bay Area investigative reporter John Geluardi released his first book, Cannabiz: The Explosive Rise of the Medical Marijuana Industry this October. A former staff writer for the SF Weekly, Geluardi saw so much momentum building behind medical pot, he researched and reported a 200-page non-fiction paperback. Geluardi talks about investing in pot, economies of scale, and new fissures in the field in this two-part Q&A edited for length and clarity.

Life-saving equipment, including a special extraction device, is now sitting on the floor inside the Boulder Emergency Squad because delivery to Mexico faces setbacks due to drug traffickers. The items were supposed to be delivered to Mante, Mexico, one of Boulder’s sister cities where the need for the gear is great. Delivery is impossible at the moment as the squad is being told that the traffickers have taken over many of the roads between the border and the city.

Prohibition-caused threats and violence by drug trafficking organizations are preventing some government oil workers from reaching installations in northern Mexico and costing state-owned Petroleos Mexicanos about $350,000 every day in lost production. That amounts to about $10.5 million per month, or about 2.3 percent of Mexico's $450 million per month average in monthly natural gas revenues.

Low attendance and a drop in donations have caused a financial crisis for the northeastern Mexican Diocese of Nuevo Laredo, which is located in an area plagued by drug prohibition violence. Weekly collections are no longer sufficient to pay for basic services, such as water and electricity.

With killings and disappearances to assert their authority, Mexico's prohibition-created drug trafficking organizations are beginning to interfere with everyday government activities in pockets of the country, keeping workers off their turf and interrupting some of the most basic services. Not only do they maintain checkpoints and kill police or mayors to control territory, they now try to keep everyone from mid-level officials to delivery truck drivers and meter readers out of rural areas they use to transport drugs, stash weapons and kidnap victims, and hide from authorities. In the process, they are blocking deliveries of gasoline, pension checks, farm aid and other services to Mexicans.

Harvard researcher John Halpern has formed a company he hopes will bring to market a drug based on his research into the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide on cluster headaches, a rare but devastating condition that is as bad as it sounds. Halpern, a noted expert in the long-term effects of drug use, said research suggests chemicals present in LSD are an astonishingly effective cure for cluster headaches. Entheogen’s drug does not cause triptastic visions, Halpern said -- it is based on BOL-148, a non-hallucinogenic LSD derivative developed in the 1950s and 60s for research into the effects of LSD on the brain, when such was last in vogue.